Asus unveils new ROG products at Computex

Asus's Republic of Gamers (ROG) arm has taken an aggressive stance at this year's Computex show, announcing a wealth of products including a prototype for what the company describes as a 'motherboard/chassis hybrid.'

Announced by Asus chairperson Jonney Shih, who described himself as being 'incredibly proud of ROG’s achievements over its first 10 years,' the ROG Avalon is claimed to be the company's 'first step to our vision of the future of DIY.' Like several modular designs before it, the Avalon does away with inserting individual circuit boards into a motherboard; instead, the SSD, PSU ,and graphics adapter are housed in modules which connect to a combined motherboard and case. Based on Intel's Z170 chipset, the machine also includes modular rear input-output for customised connectivity. No release date was given.

While the Avalon was by far the most ambitious product on show, Asus also announced several other devices which will make it to market considerably sooner: the ROG Rampage V Edition 10 motherboard, based on Intel's X99 chipset; the ROG G31 Edition 10, described as the world's most powerful compact gaming desktop and featuring the option of dual-Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPUs in two-way SLI; the ROG GX800 gaming laptop, an upgraded GX700 featuring an improved liquid-cooled docking station and a mechanical keyboard the company calls Mechanical Tactile Advanced Gaming or MechTAG; the ROG Centurion 7.1-channel gaming headset; the ROG XG Station 2 external graphics dock, which includes four USB 3.0 ports for VR hardware; and a Strix variant of the GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card.